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I passionately hate hype, especially the AI hype

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Re: I passionately hate hype, especially the AI hype

#71

Post by SecretDreams »

alganet wrote: post #65
SecretDreams wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are so many items I'd put on the list before LLMs tbh. It's not even worth the time having the conversation. My quality of life went up much more in the dial up to dsl transition. I wouldn't say DSL to fibre was as much of a jump, e.g. Anywho, that quality of life jump to DSL ultimately led to the enshitification of the internet I knew and loved and now I'm stuck talking about LLMs I wish didn't exist - I would…

To define what a breakthrough is, is hard. A "gaming PC" defines how GPUs are important. General people know something there ticks different, specialists know, industries know. It matters. It matters for a long time now. "Broadband" was a hype, temporary. Once people understood that the speed is the thing, not any name, it stopped mattering. Now every couple of years there's a mini "new broadband tech" but it's all t…

I think the easiest way to define it would be to take it a way for a bit and see how the world changes.

If we sent people back to dial up, the world would probably stop working.

If we took away LLMs, GPUs, the base world will probably keep chugging along outside of financial markets. Just IMO.

Re: I passionately hate hype, especially the AI hype

#72

Post by asdfman123 »

eulgro wrote: post #31
jackphilson wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fourth type: smart people who like hype because hype is fun and having fun is good.

That's the third type actually. But for some reason GP decided to qualify each type as either smart or dumb. Here's put better: there's 3 types of people: those who resist hype, those who profit off of it, and those who enjoy it.

Could also be the second type in denial about themselves too

Re: I passionately hate hype, especially the AI hype

#73

Post by bananalychee »

alganet wrote: post #33
Zambyte wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've been around for years now. Obviously not as long as the others, but years nonetheless. What makes you think the years so far may not continue into the future? The only pattern I can see is it being potentially unsustainable, but I find it hard to believe that, considering I can run an LLM that is more capable that SOTA from 2 years ago on a single box in my living room.

> What makes you think the years so far may not continue into the future? The same thing that makes me think that it could: I do not have a crystal ball. It's a simple test. Have patience. With your tone, even if you are right and it stands the test of time, you will look like a tool.

It's those with your attitude, in a state of constant smug denial, who look like tools right now. We'll see how it goes in a few years, but I doubt that will change. The constant goalpost-shifting as LLMs keep getting better and better is becoming embarrassing, and even if they stopped getting better from now on, which is certainly not the case, their impact on communications is on the same order of magnitude as that of the WWW. The curmudgeons I work with are too stubborn to realize that LLMs have moved past GPT-3, and most of the haters on HN sound the same.

Re: I passionately hate hype, especially the AI hype

#74

Post by nl »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #67
sqs wrote: post #17

What a shallow, negative post. "Hype" is tautologically bad. Being negative and "above the hype" makes you sound smart, but this post adds nothing to the discussion and is just as fuzzy as the hype it criticizes. > It is a real shame that some of the most beneficial tools ever invented, such as computers, modern databases, data centers, etc. exist in an industry that has become so obsessed with hype and trends that i…

>> Would not the author have claimed at the time that those technologies were also "hype"? What consistent principle does the author use (a priori) to separate "useful facts" from "hype"? Are you saying someone hyped ... databases? In the same way as AI is hyped today? This is a tweet from Sam Altman, dated April 18 2025: https://x.com/sama/status/1913320105804730518 Whence I quote: i think this is gonna be more like…

Sure, databases didn't get as much hype but that's partly because they are old.

Look at something more recent: "cloud", "social networking", "blockchain", "mobile".

Plenty of hype! Some delivered, some didn't.

Re: I passionately hate hype, especially the AI hype

#75

Post by gibbitz »

asdf12341 wrote: post #50
ninetyninenine wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one of the stupidest concepts on the face of the earth and tons of people ascribe to it unknowingly: hype = bad. AI is one of the most revolutionary things to ever happen in the last couple of years. But with enough hype tons of people now think it's complete garbage. I'm literally shocked how we can spend a couple decades fantasizing and writing stories about this level of AI, only to be bored of it in two year…

Yeah well this hype comes with a lot of financial investment, which means I get affected when the market crash. If people makes cool thing on their own money ( or just not consume as much of our total capital ), and it turns out not as affective as they would like, I would be nice to them.

Yeah the effectiveness of the hype on investment is more important than the effectiveness of the technology. AI isn't the product, the promise of the stock going up is. Buy while you can, the Emperor's New Clothes are getting threadbare.

Re: I passionately hate hype, especially the AI hype

#76

Post by dingnuts »

simonw wrote: post #64
latexr wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm literally shocked how we can spend a couple decades fantasizing and writing stories about this level of AI It was never this level of AI. The stories we wrote and fantasised were about AI you could blindly rely on, trust, and reason about. No one ever fantasised about AI which couldn’t accurately count the number of letters in a common word or that would give you provably wrong information in an assertive autho…

"The stories we wrote and fantasised were about AI you could blindly rely on, trust, and reason about." Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey - some of the earliest mainstream AI science fiction (1968, before even the Apollo moon landing!) was very much about an AI you couldn't trust.

that's a different kind of distrust, though, that was an AI that was capable of malice. In that case, "trust" had to do with loyalty.

The GP means "trust" in the sense of consistency. I trust that my steering wheel doesn't fly off, because it is well-made. I trust that you won't drive into traffic while I'm in the passenger seat, because I don't think you will be malicious towards us.

These are not the same.

Re: I passionately hate hype, especially the AI hype

#77

Post by ClumsyPilot »

jackphilson wrote: post #30
ninetyninenine wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one of the stupidest concepts on the face of the earth and tons of people ascribe to it unknowingly: hype = bad. AI is one of the most revolutionary things to ever happen in the last couple of years. But with enough hype tons of people now think it's complete garbage. I'm literally shocked how we can spend a couple decades fantasizing and writing stories about this level of AI, only to be bored of it in two year…

Don't be mad about their opinions, be grateful for the arbitrage opportunity

I like this approach, the challenge us that without a good grasp of finance it is really hard to leverage these opportunities

Re: I passionately hate hype, especially the AI hype

#78

Post by 1over137 »

nl wrote: post #74
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Would not the author have claimed at the time that those technologies were also "hype"? What consistent principle does the author use (a priori) to separate "useful facts" from "hype"? Are you saying someone hyped ... databases? In the same way as AI is hyped today? This is a tweet from Sam Altman, dated April 18 2025: https://x.com/sama/status/1913320105804730518 Whence I quote: i think this is gonna be more like…

Sure, databases didn't get as much hype but that's partly because they are old. Look at something more recent: "cloud", "social networking", "blockchain", "mobile". Plenty of hype! Some delivered, some didn't.

AI is old too.

Re: I passionately hate hype, especially the AI hype

#79

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

shikon7 wrote: post #39
rileymat2 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would we assume linear growth in capabilities and not a logarithmic growth rate? It seems time and time again, it gets harder and harder to make progress. I think back to using Dragon Natural Dictation in 1998, there seemed to be exponential promise and a ton of excitement in my young mind. But the reality was more logarithmic improvements so it is finally pretty good 25 years later.

Combine an exponential growth in investments (that is inherent to our economy) with a logarithmic return in capabilities, and you get a linear increase in capabilities.

So if you want a baby in one month, invest in 9 mothers?

Re: I passionately hate hype, especially the AI hype

#80

Post by mberning »

I worked for a very large industrial some years ago. Our leaders were so ate up with the VR hype that they greenlit a VR training experience for field technicians wherein the technician would wear a VR headset and then use a virtual iPad to diagnose some of our heavy equipment. Someone asked why they couldn’t just use an iPad IRL to learn. There was no rational justification.

Shortly after that web 3.0 took off and I started to hear that we were going to use blockchain to track the maintenance of our heavy equipment.

Now they won’t shut up about AI.

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